Lewis B has posted his first part of his interview with Jon Peters over on Guild Wars 2 Hub. In it you'll find Jon addressing profession balance, pets, tiered traits, and more, so head on over and check it out!

Also, don't miss part two coming up shortly, as well as an interview with the famed Colin Johanson!

Today we're pleased to bring you the first part of our exclusive Guild Wars 2 interview series on the state of the game as ArenaNet prepares for launch, and for the upcoming beta weekend later this month. This week we have a great two part interview with Jon Peters on the trait system and profession balancing.

Comments

Jon: I guess people read somewhere on the Internet that random effects cannot be in competitive games. Like everything on the Internet, that is at most a half truth. The truth is that random effects are what create moments of opportunity for players to react to. There is a threshold of randomness that is not acceptable, but if you are given outcomes that have clear, non-game breaking implications, those are the moments that expert players should be using to press advantages. Without randomness, all you have is masked complexity, which is hard for new players to understand, and creates false choices.

This is expected as we intentionally reduced the number of options for each choice in order to make each system easier to understand; however, we countered this by creating more choices and more interaction between those choices.

This creates more depth, but less complexity. As players dig deeper, they will find a system with more choice—one that still takes time to master, but one that will actually help more people reach that level of mastery. Of course it may frustrate people who are coming from a game they already have mastered, namely the original Guild Wars, but this is a new game after all.

Jon: I guess people read somewhere on the Internet that random effects cannot be in competitive games. Like everything on the Internet, that is at most a half truth. The truth is that random effects are what create moments of opportunity for players to react to. There is a threshold of randomness that is not acceptable, but if you are given outcomes that have clear, non-game breaking implications, those are the moments that expert players should be using to press advantages. Without randomness, all you have is masked complexity, which is hard for new players to understand, and creates false choices.

I'm really loving this response Jon made during the interview. I know that not everyone enjoys randomness (I certainly try to avoid it on a competitive level), but I feel he responds to the question very reasonably and with a cool head.

Whoohoo! Glad I stayed up. Article almost crashed the site tho. Thanks again Lewis for another lovely read. Looking forward to the second part. Gotta love the way these guys think! Give me deep over complex any day. Nice to know they have so many changes in store. BWE3 will be a whole new world.

we still build a system where the purity of purpose in professions lies more in their playstyle than in their roles.

The short answer is that pets need to be 100% responsive in combat, always attacking when they can and obeying any commands you give them. That has to happen in order for us to release the game.

We are still working out what the upper and lower limits for builds need to be. By the next beta weekend, you will see a lot of balance changes to all of the professions as we work toward establishing those limits. There are still going to be builds that fall into the glass-cannon category, support category, etc. We just need to determine where to draw the line.

That is an interesting mine change indeed - didn't expect any skills to lose kit status altogether at this stage!I wonder if any other skills gained kit status...

I wonder if the mine skill is a Gadget now, or there's a new skill category e.g. "Ordnance"?If one elixir was 'misplaced' between BWEs 2 & 3 (*cough C or U cough*), the engineer would be approaching a potential standardized 4 skills-per-type pattern.

A bit heavy on the Engineer's side this interview, I'm not sure if your personal interest in this profession required such a preferential treatment. I skipped that part completely.Other than that there was some nice insight to be found, very nice.

This is great to read, I don't play Engineer at all but still worth hearing about it as we know many players have issues with that profession. I can't wait for the Mesmer portion, which is my main concern.

A bit heavy on the Engineer's side this interview, I'm not sure if your personal interest in this profession required such a preferential treatment. I skipped that part completely.Other than that there was some nice insight to be found, very nice.

It’s pure chance that Engineer questions surfaced in the first part of this interview, the second published later today covers Guardian, Necromancer, Mesmer and Thief in some form. Ideally I’d like one interview per profession, but it’s just not possible.